"Stop Yelling!", I yelled.

NOISE!

I can't stand it!

Especially when I'm trapped in a small area with the decibels reaching eardrum-rupturing levels.

For example, the other night our entire family (even our dog) were safely buckled into our SUV, on our way to our lake house. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, but we hadn't even made it out of our village's borders when I had a Mommy Meltdown. It was big. It was bad. It was ugly. It was caused by....

NOISE!

It probably didn't help that I had spent the entire day doing laundry, cleaning the house, and packing up food and clothes for our weekend getaway. All these chores were "extra"; they were in addition to my regular chores of shuttling the 4 oldest kids to/from school, "regular" cleaning, and chasing a very active toddler.
It also didn't help that the dog picked that day to eat from the garbage can, and vomit her "plunder" all over the kitchen floor.
And, I wasn't overly-pleased that the afore-mentioned toddler learned how to open the lid on the toilet that day and give himself a lovely hair washing.

The cherry on the sundae was the fact that 3 members of the family were still recovering from a bad stomach flu, and my husband was showing all the signs of coming down with the same virus.

Still, we (stupidly) soldiered on and packed up the car.
Enter THE NOISE.

Everybody was crabby, and I was no exception. At that point, I was probably fueling the fire.

"The DVD player isn't ready to go with a movie already playing? WHO screwed THAT up?!?"

"Where's the dog's leash? Why isn't it in the back of the car?"

"Did you turn off the basement lights? NO??? DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING???"

Yeah. I wouldn't have wanted to get into the car with me, either.

Cue the baby's non-stop screaming. That's his latest trick. While he has a pretty good vocabulary for a 15-month-old, he has only grasped about a dozen words that convey his wants/needs. So, he screams. High-pitched. Over and over. It reverberates really nicely in a car.

In situations like these, I've lost all control over my emotions. And, NOISE, any NOISE, makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. So, try to imagine how far my eyes bugged out of my head when my 10-year-old, 8-year-old, and 5-year-old started arguing over who had more of the blanket they were sharing. GAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

"It's not covering my feet!"
"You are hogging it!"
(Series of loud screams from Baby Brother)
"She keeps trying to put her legs on top of the blanket!"

Mommy Dearest: "THAT'S IT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"

I warned you it was ugly.

It was at this point that my darling husband informed me that he had no desire to ride with me any further, let alone spend a weekend with me in this emotional state, and he would happily turn the car around and go home. How DOES he stay so calm when he says those things? And, why doesn't all that NOISE bother him, at all?

I'll tell you why: over the years there have been a few studies done on noise and it's effects on stress-levels and blood pressure. Some studies were even gender-related. These studies found that women were noticeably affected by noise, even more so than were men.
It's also a long-held scientific belief that primitive woman was wired to be more sensitive to her offspring's sounds. After all, back in the good ol' Cave Days, if your children were screaming, it was a good bet that it was because they were being eaten by a wild animal. Sound triggered Mama's adrenaline, and she would run to save her babies.

I am very happy to report that in modern-day America, we aren't under the constant threat of our children being eaten alive in some faraway field. However, our children are still equipped with their "alarm system" and women are instinctively listening for these screams.
But, when our kids are screaming out of frustration, and both they and Mama are strapped into our seats, AND Mama's intellect tells her that there is no danger, that dang adrenaline still kicks in! Therefore, it has no outlet other than inappropriate emotional outbursts.

This is no excuse for my behavior. I am a rational adult who should always have control over her emotions.
This is an explanation of why I (sometimes) appear to be a raving lunatic. For me, my children's whining, screaming, and other annoying sounds are worse that nails on a chalkboard. And, when these NOISES are coupled with seven (8, counting the pooch) bodies crammed into a small metal container on wheels, it's unbearable.

Don't worry.
I've assured my husband that I will purchase some heavy-duty earplugs before our next car trip. Since I can't temporarily remove my kids' vocal chords, it seems to be the only way to cure my problem!

Perfection

Does anyone out there remember that Milton-Bradley game, Perfection, from the 1970s and 1980s?
It was a plastic rectangular box, which housed a spring-loaded board which was filled with many small openings for geometric shapes. At the top of the box was a timer-dial and a toggle-switch. The game also included the small plastic geometric shapes (circle, star, hexagon, crescent, etc) which corresponded (or were supposed to, anyway!) to the openings in the board. The player was supposed to pile up all the pieces next to the outside of this plastic box, press down the spring-loaded board, turn the dial all the way, then press the switch to "ON". When this happened, the game would begin making a mechanical ticking sound, and the player was supposed to begin placing all the jumbled up pieces into the correct holes before the dial returned to its starting place.
If the player placed all pieces correctly, she could hit the switch and stop the game. WINNER!
If she failed, the board would spring up violently, shaking any correctly placed pieces out of their openings. AAAHHH!

As a child, I begged my parents in the weeks leading up to Christmas for Perfection. Like other kids, I wanted to be the "perfect" child from the TV commercial who beat the timer and won the game. I was positive I could do it, too. Positive. In fact this was a key selling point when I made my case to my parents.
You can imagine my devastation (and my parents' amusement) when, on Christmas morning, I tore open my new game of Perfection, set it all up, and proceeded to lose every time I played. Yup.
Perspiration. Hair-pulling. Gritting of teeth. Perfection being smashed into my bedroom wall. Talk about stress!

Why did I just go to all the trouble of explaining a retro (humor me) children's board game? Because the feelings it conjures up (besides nostalgia) accurately describe how I feel when I take all five of my children out in public.

Please do not misunderstand me. My children are usually remarkably well-behaved when they are out in public; especially, by today's standards. In fact, almost every time we venture out as a group, my husband and/or I receive more than one compliment on how courteous, how well-mannered, how quiet our kids are. And, we proudly acknowledge these facts.

However, these comments are almost always accompanied by the givers' astonished and incredulous expressions. It truly amazes most people that a family of such "enormous" size ("Enormous"? PUH-LEASE!) can behave in such a genteel manner.
So, of course, my neurotic personality interprets this to mean that my family and I are under a public microscope and should ALWAYS behave accordingly.
My perfectionist tendencies (I'm a first-born, after all!) will not accept failure. My family is representing large families everywhere. No one in MY family had better give "enormous" families a bad name!

Here's where I start having Perfection flashbacks...

"You can't wear that to church! You wore it LAST week!" (Like a 3-month-old knows what "week" means!)

"Shhh! Talk quietly. Everyone is staring at us."

"Now, guys, before we go into the store, let's review the rules: no yelling, no running, one hand on the shopping cart at all times."

Also, the perspiration, hair-pulling, and teeth-gritting come into play before we even leave the house. My kids should be grateful that I stopped throwing things into my bedroom wall when I was 15. At least, I stopped throwing living things.

Now, I know most good moms out there will tell me that even parents of one child have these kinds of feelings. Heck, I had these feelings when my oldest was an "only"! But, no one can deny that our culture has stereotyped larger families, and this stereotype is foremost in peoples' minds when they encounter more than 3 kids in a family. Why do you think I hate the remake of "Yours, Mine, and Ours" so much?

So, yes, I am probably unfairly placing a huge and unnecessary obligation on my kids' shoulders when I expect them to behave like mini-adults. I'm working on it.

But, if all 5 of my kids had a "bad behavior day" on the same day, at the same time, in the same PUBLIC place.... Well, what do you think people would think or say? It's very different than just one child publicly freaking out. That's bad enough.

So, you'll forgive me if I try to get my (sometimes) jumbled up "pieces" quickly into their "correct places" before the whole game explodes.